Commercial Verse

Meredith Clark will write you a poem about anything. But first you have to pay.

At least one person comes up to Meredith Clark each week and cries, “I need a poem!”

It seems an odd request to make. Poetry isn’t typically a commodity.  But this is exactly how Clark’s Poem Store works. Sitting on a crate, her vintage Olivetti typewriter on her lap, the twenty-eight-year-old accepts old Polaroid pictures, pens, pizza and, of course, cash in exchange for poems, which she composes on the spot.

Photography by Andrew Waits for City Arts.

Clark starts each Sunday morning at the Ballard Farmers Market feeling tired, but after a couple of hours, when the market begins to get busy, business picks up and she’s enlivened by the writing that quickly fills her day.

Clark writes about whatever her customers want, from the fruit sold at nearby stalls to growing up in another city. Before writing each poem, she conducts a brief interview with her customer about his or her topic of choice.

“Most people surprise me with how much they reveal about their lives in order to get the poem they want,” she says. Still, because the emotions and images she can glean from a brief conversation with a stranger are limited, her commissioned poems tend toward sober reflections of the seasons, food and family.

The Poem Store began in Central Park in New York City in 2006, where Clark, inspired by a similar store, decided to put her own creative writing skills, honed previously in collegiate publications, to the test. She set out a table and put up a sign offering free haikus, and within a couple hours, a crowd had surrounded her.

Meredith Clark writes poems on a vintage Olivetti purchased at 20Twenty on Ballard Ave. NW.

After earning an MFA in creative writing from the Art Institute of Chicago and moving to Seattle last summer, Clark saw an opportunity to take up the business again, but she expanded the business model to include free verse for a price.

Though she writes prolifically every weekend, she doesn’t have any copies of her work to share: “They’re for my customers. But there are a few I wished I had kept.”

The immediacy of the work has also resulted in a few poems Clark wished she hadn’t released into the world, though she accepts that as part of the process.

“The poems are kind of a rough draft,” she explains; “I don’t have time to think, I just type.”

“It’s a lot like line cooking compared to cooking at home,” she continues. “My personal poems have a long incubation period. In the market, I have fifteen minutes and it’s a collaboration with the customer. Fortunately, creative people are notoriously good with deadlines.”

According to Clark, the business is profiting from the spirit of generosity, sharing and connection she makes with her customers.

“I feel like I’ve made a tacit agreement with the people of Seattle; people expect me to be there, so I plan on continuing.” •